


found a martyr in my bed tonight

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Nightmares, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 11:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14448759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: “I didn’t expect you to stay this long”“Where else would I go?”





	found a martyr in my bed tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timetravelingpalmer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetravelingpalmer/gifts).



> there was this very soft(tm) aesthetic on tumblr which featured a picture of a beach/waves and somehow that inspired this fic

(“I didn’t expect you to stay this long”

The words are soft, barely able to heard over the sound of the waves crashing down around them.

“Where else would I go?”

There’s so many ways to answer that. 

Places he’s been before. Stories he’s told of knights and aliens and universities and ninjas and wars. Stories that had been about people she stole him away from. People that had so much more good in them than she would ever be capable of having.

People worthy of that look, the one that  was so much like hope, which always seemed to linger in his eyes, making it hard for her to look at him for too long. 

She tears her gaze away from those eyes now, focusing instead of the water, the blue hues reminding her too much of another place that she used to call  _ home _ . 

How could she tell him that her nightmares were usually about losing him?

“Anywhere but here.”)

  
  
  


The Time Stone was a blessing.

A gift.

A second chance. 

Something that Nora hadn’t been entirely certain that she deserved. Not then, in that moment, standing in the middle of what had been a battlefield not long before, one where she had fought alongside the people that she had always considered her enemies.

Fought alongside  _ him _ .

That had mattered.

Somehow. Someway.

Even if she was herded away to a Time Bureau prison moments later. Agents grabbing onto her with hands that were just a bit too rough, because even if she had helped in the end, she would always be the monster that tried to ruin their precious time. 

But they were wrong.

In that moment, it had mattered.  _ She _ had mattered. 

As more than just a demon’s vessel, as more than just the forever loyal daughter of a man considered mad by most, as more than just the magic that brewed in her veins.

For a second, he had looked at her, like he could see through every wall that she had ever tried to put up. 

As if he could see down to her very core.

And as if he saw goodness there inside of her.

And for a moment, for just that brief one, she had believed in what he saw. 

  
  
  


(She wakes in the middle of the night.

A gasp falling from her lips, her heart pounding to fast in her chest, the feeling of terror near overwhelming.

It's not the first time she's woken from a nightmare.

Certainly it wouldn't be the last.

“It’s okay, Nora, you're safe.”

If she closes her eyes the dream will come back. The prison of her own mind’s making. The walls tinted blue. The overwhelming loneliness. The feeling of her very soul being ripped apart.

If she even had a soul left to rip.

“I'm here. I've got you.”

It is all too familiar. 

Too real.

And yet…  A small part of her her knows that it is not. That brief awareness that comes from waking. That processes the sheets against her skin. The hints of morning streaming in from their bedroom window. The feeling of someone in bed beside her, speaking quietly and softly, a hand against her should as if to help ground her.

She focuses on that hand.

On the person it belongs to.

The one who is always there.

“You’re safe now.”)

  
  
  


The trial was a farce. She hadn't been particularly surprised.  A procedure more than anything else. The Time Bureau checking their boxes and crossing their ts in an effort to pretend that they had any legitimacy.

There was no judge. 

No jury of her peers.

Just  _ Director Sharpe  _ reading out a list of crimes against time and humanity with an expression that was more disappointed than anything else.

It was only at the end, after a sentence had been read, an eternity in a Time Bureau prison, in a place where time didn't even exist, that she had paused and looked at her with an expression so very like pity - “Perhaps after a few years without incident we could revisit your sentence...”

She didn't bother telling Sharpe that she wouldn't be sticking around that long, that she need not look at her with the disappointed look someone who thought that she could have done better. 

There was only one person that had ever worn that expression well.

She had just nodded her head. A small concession. 

It was not as if there ever was a question. No one looks twice at a Darhk and sees anything other than the darkness within. No one would have believed her to be innocent. She had accepted that long ago, when she was a little girl recently orphaned, hearing her mother and father’s crimes read out to her like a sentencing of her own. 

“Really, I’m just shocked it took you this long to lock me up.”

  
  
  


(“Are you happy?”

She knows that she shouldn’t ask. That it isn't the right time or place. That there never really be a right  _ time _ , but she can't help it.

Can't help but risk her own happiness.

He looks surprised at her question. 

The song that he had been humming dying in his lips, the spoon he had been stirring his coffee with stilling between his fingers and -  _ oh  _ if this end she didn't want it.

She wants to take her words back.

To pretend she never asked.

The doubts, the insecurities, the uncertainty - it would better than not having him at all. A thousand nightmares about him leaving would be better than facing those fears in the light of the day.

But eventually he does speak, abandoning his coffee on the counter to step closer to her. “Of course, I’m happy.”

“How can you be sure?”

He doesn't answer. 

Not with words.

But he holds her in his arms a moment later and she thinks that that could almost be enough.)

  
  
  


She had managed to wait a day.

Nearly twenty-four hours.

One night, really.

Spent on a bed that wasn’t built for comfort, in a prison that was meant to keep her for  _ eternity _ . She couldn’t imagined it. Hadn’t wanted to imagine it.

So she had simply decided not to. Instead she reached underneath her pillow to feel for the stone that the Time Bureau Agents had been too dense to take away from her.

It hadn’t taken much, just a bit of the magic inside of her, reacting with the relic of a man that had died for her, given to her by a man that had believed there was goodness inside of her.

Nora was certain they were both fools, but it had led to this moment. 

To an escape.

And she would have been a fool herself not to take it.

So with one last lingering look around her cell, she turned the stone over in her hand, and had let its magic pull her away. 

  
  
  


(“I could watch this sunrise forever,” he says, so casually and easy, as if he's remarking upon the weather.

Perhaps he is.

Perhaps she's reading too much into it.

She knows that he’s offering her a distraction. An opportunity not to answer the question that had been there on the edge of his lips waiting to be asked since the moment she had woken them both with a scream. 

Eventually she would have to. 

Surely.

He is not the type to let her bottle her emotions up. No matter how much she wants to. She knows that eventually he will coax them out of her, a comforting confession that was supposed to lead to catarsis, though she was certain his theories on mindfulness and emotions were nonsense at best.

_ Later _ , she silently vows to herself, later she will tell him.

For now, she follows his gaze, staring out the window, down at the beach and surf spread out before them, the way the sun has just begun to spread bright hues over the water. Turning the blue that reminder her too much of her nightmares into soft oranges and golds instead. 

She's never found sunrises particularly exciting.

Not until they came here.

Not until she sat beside him each morning with a coffee in her hands waiting for the day to finally begin. Ignoring the feeling of emptiness inside of her, the place that cannot be filled with a warm drink and the soft reassurance of a man that loves too easily.

“For how long,” she asks. 

A gentle prompting.

A need for reassurance.

One which he always gives her.

“For all of time.”)

  
  
  


Being a fugitive was only slightly better than being a prisoner. 

She was not certain what she had expected. But this was not it.

She could never linger in one place for too long. Not before she would begin to feel their gazes upon her. Strangers. People who lurked in the shadows. People who had no right to know her face and yet…

She swore they watched her too closely.

The paranoia creeping in even without the familiar voice in her head to remind her that nobody was to be trusted. 

Staying long was never an option.

Settling down, living a normal life - she was never meant for those things.

Those dreams had died when she was no more than a child.

So she ran.

And ran.

And ran.

Until finally one of those faces that looked at her far too long looked familiar.

“Nora?”

She had meant to ignore him. Meant to turn away and pretend it had never happened. Meant to grab the bag she always kept packed and ready to go at the foot of her bed. Meant to find another place in time or space to hide away from the world in. Alone, as always.

But something had caused her to pause.

Something in the way he had looked at her.

The way he always had.

Since the very beginning.

“You don’t really plan on running forever,” he asked.

A question that she hadn’t been able to answer not then, not now. 

She hadn’t planned for that. Hadn’t considered to. Because she had spent so long being at the whims of others. Locked up - in a picture perfect home, in an orphanage, in a mental institute, in a demonic cult, within her own mind… She was tired of being locked up. 

Running was all she had.

All she had ever imagined having.

Until he was standing there looking as if stumbling upon her was one of the greatest blessings the world had ever given him. 

So she had asked, with honest confusion and wonder, “Where else would I go?”

  
  
  


(Finally, after so long that she’s certain he’s forgotten the question, she speaks, tuning away from the waves for the first time to look at him. 

Truly look at him.

This man that chose her over everything else.

For a reason that she still cannot fathom.

“Everyone I’ve ever loved always leaves.”)

 


End file.
